MARIA M. BaHM: Angelus Silesius' Cherubinischer Wandersmann. A Modem Reading with Selected Translations. - New York etc.: Peter Lang 1997 (= Renaissance and Baroque Studies and Texts. Vol. 22.) XVI. 174 pp.
No other poet of the German Baroque has been translated into English as frequently as Angelus Silesius. This is not difficult to understand. Finding an equivalent for the alexandrine, unusual in English poetry except for the final line of the Spenserian stanza, and managing the compressed antithesis and chiasmus within the couplet are attractive challenges to poetic dexteri ty. One can pick and choose among the hundreds of epigrams, retaining only those the translator finds congenial. No one has come close to trans lating the entire Cherubinischer Wandersmann into English; Henri Plard produced a complete French version, but, as is common in French rende rings of German verse, in prose paraphrase. The mystical concepts and attitudes, though they may seem exotic when first encountered, are actually not too difficult once the principle is grasped, especially as they exhibit remarkable similarities across a wide range of epochs and cultures. Maria M. B6hm has translated 117 of the epigrams, accompanying them with a discursive commentary supported by numerous, sometimes chatty endnotes, and introduced with several chapters on the life and times of Johann Scheffler, the literary environment, themes, and formal aspects, along with an overview of mystical traditions - German, European, "Oriental," and contemporary. The choices are made to support a thesis: that the underlying meaning is not Christian or even religious, but pantheis tic and humanistic, and concerns the creation of the world and of God himself by man's intelligence, consciousness, wisdom, knowledge, and logos. The purpose is to conform the Wandersmann to the views of contem porary New Agers; thus we are invited to wander cherubinically among Rilke, Jung, Einstein, Heidegger, Derrida, Alan Watts, quantum physics, Castaneda, Deepak Chopra, and contemporary neo-mysticism, with friendly glances toward belief in angels and UFOs. I shall refrain from comment on this aspect of the project and restrict myself to observations on its execu tion. The enthusiasm of discovery has caused B6hm to take a rather imperious view of previous scholarship and, sometimes, of the translations of others. In fact, most of what is in the book has long been known. She makes a particular point of having worked in a Polish library, but nothing new has been found about the background of the family, and she misspells the Polish title of Scheffler's father. Given her Polish interests, it is surprising that she does not cite Leszek Kolakowski's long, thoughtful essay, which 451 appeared in 1969 as "Angelus Silesius: L'antinomie du pantbeisme" in his book, Chretiens sans Eglise; one would have thought such titles pertinent to her concerns. She complains that the Wandersmann has been neglected in scholarship owing to an alleged rigidity of literary critics in regard to genre categories and linear, unified order, but her peculiarly alphabetized bibliog raphy (Jakob B6hme appears under both J and B, Meister Eckhart under M and E), though it contains much remote material, is not exhaustive as regards modern studies. For example, she lists only one of Louise Gniidin ger's several insistences upon consistent Catholic orthodoxy in both the Wandersmann and Heilige Seelen-Lust, a view to which B6hm, of course, is opposed. She disposes of the latter work, incidentally, as kitsch, and never mentions the Sinnliche Beschreibung der Vier Letzten Dinge. This dismissal indicates that she has no real interest in the author or the puzzle of his personality, a posture that permits her to edit the text down to a remnant consonant with her interests. Given not only her particular claim that there is a dearth of English-language study but also her interest in angels, one would think she might have consulted Peter Skrine's "Angelus Silesius; or, The Art of Being an Angel" from the London Germanic Studies of 1980. She employs the popular historian Will Durant but not Wentzlaff-Egge bert's Deutsche Mystik. There are other bibliographical pecularities: my Twayne book of many years ago is inexplicably numbered among the translations, while Frederick Franck's "Zen" translations of 1976 appear with the secondary literature; several other items are questionably placed. B6hm's knowledge is substantial but uneven in its reliability. She wrongly states that the Wandersmann is Scheffler's first publication, perhaps sign of a failure to consult Diinnhaupt's bibliography. She seems to lack a clear idea of what Scheffler's polemical pamphlets were about, implying that they were defenses against attacks on the heterodoxy of the Wandersmann rather than violently intolerant Counter-Reformation tracts. In this connection, it is in no way "surprising" (12) that Scheffler denied having had contact with Netherlandic sectarians in a pamphlet of 1664, when his polemical career had already begun. Several citations from Josef Schmidt's excellent introduction to Maria Shrady's translations are ascribed to Shrady herself. Two comparisons with epigrams of Czepko are taken at second hand; she does not seem to have consulted Werner Milch's edition. Consistently she refers to Scheffler as "Silesius", as though that were a surname rather than a cognomen. The some thirty misprints are perhaps not excessive by today's standards, but a few are distracting. The notes to the section on "Thematic and formal aspects" come to be misnumbered. As for the translations, one notices immediately that they are not metri cal or rhymed, except, as B6hm quaintly remarks, when she "could not help" (74) replicating the rhythm. Thus the hypnotic poetic effect that enhances the annulment of affirmation is lost; the epigrams tum into